


The No-Tailed Fox

by ceedeeandco (Scedasticity)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 06:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/ceedeeandco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy the kitsune: Who she was, and how she got that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The No-Tailed Fox

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my artist, [adrenalineshots](http://adrenalineshots.livejournal.com), for coping with the OC barrage. ;-) Don't forget to look at the awesome [ART POST](http://adrenalineshots.livejournal.com/183576.html)!
> 
> A million thanks to [claudiapriscus](http://claudiapriscus.livejournal.com/), who convinced me that people might actually be interested in reading the Saga of the Non-Time-Traveling Amy Pond, and went on to be a fantastic beta.
> 
> For warnings, see the end notes.

When they were little, Grandmother told them stories in both English and Japanese, but overall they heard English a lot more. Drew learned some Japanese phrases here and there, mostly those common in bedtime stories. Amy was hopeless. She couldn't understand without Drew giving hints, and her pronunciation was worse.

There was one word she always got right, though -- _kitsune_.

Drew was waiting in ambush when Grandmother got back from starting the dishwasher. "Grandmother? I have a question."

Amy sighed and leaned over her coloring book. They'd argued for _hours_ , ending in stalemate -- Drew was still going to ask, but Amy refused to back him up.

"Yes, Drew?"

"Some of the other kids in kindergarten have supplements. And when they say supplements, they mean chewy flingstones vitamins that taste like candy. Why can't we have those? Our supplements are _gross_."

Grandmother sat down in her favorite chair. "It's because we're kitsune, Drew. Do you remember what that means?"

"It means we have claws we're not allowed to show anyone and when we get old we can turn into a magic fox," Drew said, without enthusiasm. Yesterday he'd told Amy he wanted to be a firefighter instead of a magic fox, because to do that you just had to grow up, not get old.

"It means that in our souls, we are already foxes," Grandmother corrected gently. "That form, that magic, is our birthright. It takes a long time to get that first tail, but every tailed kitsune I've ever met has told me it's worth the wait. You just have to get there."

Drew kind of looked like he was still thinking firefighter. "What about the supplements? Why do we have to eat them? What _are_ they?"

Grandmother sighed. "We have to eat them because, unpleasant as they are, we would die without them. As for what they are -- just at the base of the brain there is a little organ called the pituitary gland. It's so small that you can't tell if it's missing when you look at a body, so I can bring back plenty for all of us from the mortuary."

" _Gross!_ " Drew exclaimed. "Dead people's brains--"

"I told you she brought them home from work," Amy mumbled. "I told you not to ask if you didn't want to know." Now, if only Drew learned his lesson and didn't ask where--

"What about the _fresh_ ones?"

Grandmother had sighed. "It does mean killing humans, and I don't like it. But growing children can't live off pickled brains and human food alone, so it can't be helped. I do my best to find humans who are no great loss. When I was younger, sometimes I would hitchhike-- Well, never mind that. The fact of the matter is it's part of being tailless, and there's nothing to be done about it."

For once, Drew was speechless.

"I know this is hard for you," Grandmother said. "And it's my fault that it is, because I'm bringing you up like humans, among humans, because I've always felt it's better to be among humans than to be alone. We just -- are what we are. It doesn't mean you don't care about them. It doesn't mean you don't value them. It doesn't mean you can't _love_ them. Just... once in a while you have to find one you're willing to kill. Once you're an adult you can live on scavenged flesh, and once you get your first tail you won't need to touch a brain again if you don't want to."

Amy jerked in her seat. "Grandmother, you're not going to make us--"

"Curiously, children stop needing fresh meat at about the same time they get old enough to safely hunt for themselves. So, no, Amy, you won't have to hunt until you have to feed your own child someday."

"I'm never having any!" Drew declared.

"Plenty of time to worry about that when you're older, dear," Grandmother said. Amy noted this was not agreement.

That night at bedtime, Grandmother told them a story about a clever five-tailed kitsune who tricked an arrogant warrior and saved a village with her shapeshifting and magic. ( _Eating brains_ did not feature.) Amy had to admit that being a kitsune _with tails_ sounded good, just... really far away.

She wasn't surprised when, the next morning, Drew told her, "I've changed my mind. I'm not going to be a firefighter, I'm going to be a doctor scientist and make a chewy grape-flavored supplement you don't have to hunt."

It was one thing to know that tailless kitsune, if they lived long enough, would get their first tail and change into their fox-form. It was another thing to know it was happening to Grandmother, _now_. Her white hair was coming in red at the roots, and her claws weren't retracting quite all the way.

The hair wasn't a problem, but when Grandmother was doing Amy's braid she'd caught her ear with a claw and made it bleed. For the moment she could cover the claws with glue-on fake fingernails, but those wouldn't help forever, and it was hard to get anything done with them on. So--

"I'm going to go to Japan," Grandmother repeated. "The metamorphosis of the first tail can take a long time, and there are many things that can happen. The best thing to do is to spend it at the shrine of the no-tailed fox. There are people there who know what to do."

"They should put a shrine of the no-tailed fox in San Francisco," Drew said. "It's a big city. It would be conveniently located."

Grandmother laughed. "There's only one, Drew, and I don't think they're planning on moving it, especially not out of Japan."

"Well, _I_ wasn't planning on moving out of San Francisco!" Drew looked pretty pleased with himself, so Amy poked him in the ribs on general principle. She poked him again, harder, when he added, "Besides, Amy really really can't speak--"

"I know, Drew, and I've thought a lot about that. You have lives here, and we have a system that works well. While I have some cousins in Japan, I don't know any of them personally well enough to send you to them."

"Why can't we stay with you in the shrine?" Amy asked. "We could be good."

"And if it were a matter of a few weeks I'd take you up on that, but this is months, at least. And after the metamorphosis, I may not be able to take a human form for some years. I won't be able to take care of you, Amy -- and I don't want to take you away from the only home you've ever known. So--"

"You're leaving us here?" Drew blurted.

"Let me finish, Drew. _So_ , I've asked your mother to come live in San Francisco with you. She can take over my job at the mortuary, and you should be able to keep going as you have been."

"...Oh."

"Your mother hasn't really lived as a human for a long time," Grandmother said. "Not since Hunters killed her parents."

Their mother's parents, but not Grandmother because Grandmother was actually their _great_ -grandmother, right.

"This is going to be hard for her, so I would like it if you would be patient with her. Don't try to change her mind about humans. Only she can do that. But that doesn't mean you should copy how she feels, either. We're kitsune, but we have human kin, and we shouldn't forget that."

Grandmother opened the box on her lap and drew out a large, heavy ring. "This belonged to James, your great-grandfather and my husband. He got it when he finished school to be a military officer. He was a very brave man, who fought in Europe in World War II, and he always tried to judge people based on their hearts, not their skin." She handed it to Drew, who peered wide-eyed at the embossed letters and the single reddish stone.

Next, she pulled out a necklace, a pendant in the shape of a crescent moon with a star resting on the bottom tip. "This belonged to April, your grandmother. She wore it to show her belief in a moon goddess who loved all her children. She fought for peace and equality, and she did it without weapons. She knew your grandfather was a kitsune but stayed with him nonetheless." She handed the necklace to Amy. "I want you to keep these to help you remember your human ancestors, and that someone need not be a kitsune to be a kindred spirit."

Amy pulled the necklace over her head. "I'll never take it off," she promised. Then she frowned. "Except maybe in the bath?"

"Mine doesn't fit," Drew said.

"I'll find a chain for it," Grandmother said, smiling.

"But then it'll be a necklace, and Mark says only girls-- Ow! Amy!"

"I told you I'd poke you the next time you said 'Mark says'. He's a stupidhead and I don't know why you even want to be friends with him."

"Because he has a trampoline, and you didn't have to poke me with your _claws_."

Their mother had left them with Grandmother when they were just a few days old -- actually she'd come to Grandmother's house for the delivery and turned them over almost right away, but she'd _left_ when they were a few days old. Needless to say, they couldn't remember her from that. She'd visited a few times since then, never for very long, usually when she was injured. She sent them a present every year on their birthday, usually something kind of strange -- one year it was a compass, once an adult's ski jacket, another year a set of ten-pound lifting weights which had gotten used as doorstops.

But she came when Grandmother called. She signed up for the mortuary job. She listened to all the information about the school schedule and piano lessons without saying it was 'human bullshit'. She helped Grandmother pack and promised to send word and to stay in San Francisco at least through the end of elementary school. She smiled at Amy and Drew -- stiffly, but it was better than nothing. And it seemed like it would be okay -- until Grandmother's boat was out of sight.

"I know Grandmother's been coddling you," Violet said. "Life isn't like that." And she piled them in her car, didn't even take them home to pack, and drove them out of San Francisco, away from home. She didn't say a word the whole way to New Mexico, while Amy and Drew huddled together in the back seat and hoped that 'coddled' meant 'allowed to watch too much television'.

She stopped the car in the middle of nowhere and ordered Amy and Drew out. She threw a canteen of water out after them. "Don't waste that. There are prairie dogs everywhere here," she said. "If you want to eat, go hunting."

Then she drove away and left them.

"I _hate_ her," Drew said. "She lied to Grandmother. She's mean -- I bet she _ate_ our dad! Don't you think?"

Amy shrugged dispiritedly. "I bet she would. Dunno if she did."

If there had been anywhere for them to go, they would have gone.

They never did catch a prairie dog -- the damn things were too fast and the burrows were too small. But on the second day, Amy hit on _stealing_ kills. She tackled and hung on to the coyote while Drew snagged... dinner. Claws were clearly not what the coyote expected from humans, and it was happy to take off, though not before getting its own hits in.

They tore the carcass apart with their claws and choked the meat down raw, then tried to clean up Amy's injuries with Drew's shirt.

"There's nothing good about this," Amy said, choking back tears. "She's just making us horrible disgusting animals."

"We're not," Drew replied fiercely. "We're people. We're good people. We _are_."

Violet came back that night. She eyed them balefully. "You didn't kill it."

How did she know that? "How does that _matter_?" Amy demanded. "We _got_ it! We were -- _cunning_." Foxes were cunning, she couldn't complain about cunning, right?

"I suppose you were the one to wrestle a... coyote, was it?"

"...Yes."

Violet nodded, and sighed. "I suppose you'll have to do." Then she turned to Drew and stabbed him in the heart.

Amy screamed, and threw herself at her mother, claws out and teeth bared. If it had been another coyote, she might have killed it, but she was eight years old and facing an adult, and Violet easily pinned her arms.

"Stop it, Amy. I have to travel light, and I can only justify dragging along one kid. It was this or abandon him, and that would have been crueller, to let him starve on his own. He was helpless."

Amy tried to struggle free. "I hate you."

"Hate the Hunters who make this kind of running necessary."

"We never had to leave San Francisco! I _hate you_! Hate you more than anything, hate you forever, hate you hate you hate you--"

Violet slammed a smelly cloth over her face, and Amy passed out. When she woke up, she was in the car, and they were driving. Violet must have left Drew -- Drew's _body_ \-- in the desert. Maybe someone would find him. Maybe someone would find their great-grandfather's ring, and realize who he was, and come save her.

No one did.

The painfully ironic thing was that Violet didn't even seem to think hunting animals was a crucial skill. For some reason she'd decided that would be the best way to pick which of her children was worth investing time and resources in. It wasn't until Amy turned ten that Violet started trying to impart what she believed to be real survival skills -- treating her as a student, not whiny luggage.

"You don't know how to use your claws," she announced after they'd checked into yet another crappy motel. "Sit down-- All right, now hold your hands up and extend." Amy obeyed, reluctantly. Violet held one of her hands in place, and pressed up on the bottom of a claw, like she was trying to bend it back. Just as it was getting painful, the claw retracted. "See that? Too much pressure, and they retract. You have to be careful about slashing, because if you even clip bone or cartilege, surprise! You're clawing them with fingernails."

Amy stared at her.

"You _can_ slash with your claws, but there's a trick to stopping them from retracting, and you shouldn't use it until you have a good understanding of what their breaking point is. Regrowing claws is excruciating."

Amy retrieved her hand, and kept staring.

"They're meant to _puncture_. If they're angled right, they can punch through bone like tinfoil. The purpose is getting the brainmeat out, but you can use it fighting, too."

Amy found her voice. "I don't want to fight anybody."

"Yeah? Neither did my mother, and that didn't stop the Hunters from blowing her head off with a shotgun while she begged them to stop. Hell, and she was _human_." Violet went to the window and lifted the dingy curtain. "But don't worry. I'm sure all the people in this part of town will respect the little blond girl's pacifist stance and stay clear of her when her mother's away for a weekend."

"I'm not blond," Amy mumbled, trying not to look as rattled as she felt at the idea of Violet leaving her alone here. They'd learned about 'stranger danger' in first grade. And she wouldn't expect anyone to look out for a kid it wasn't their _job_ to care about. Some people wouldn't even when it was their job.

"Close enough," Violet said. "Look, you're naturally equipped to take care of yourself. You just have to put the effort into it. If you can even get your hand on someone's throat, then spring the claws, chances are good they're going down. If you keep your fingers together and aim for the center, you'll shred the windpipe."

It was the first lesson, but not the last. Violet wasn't satisfied until anyone who came after Amy expecting a helpless little girl would be very unpleasantly surprised.

Also very briefly surprised. Violet never bothered with _nonlethal_ combat moves.

Amy opened the package expecting it to be the latest false identity documents. Besides finding out what her new last name would be -- Violet always left it up the forger, a six-tailed kitsune with an odd sense of humor -- she was hoping to get an idea of whether they'd be in a situation where she could go to school. If Violet expected it, there would be faked school records for Amy Throgmorton, or whatever.

It wasn't identity documents, with or without school records. It was a sizeable wad of cash and a typewritten letter addressed to 'Vi'. Amy picked up the discarded packaging and actually checked the return address this time. The package was from a S. Gustafson, somewhere in Maine.

After a very slight hesitation, Amy picked up the letter.

 _Vi_ , it opened, _as you requested, I sent cash this time. There should be $5000. If anything happened to it in the mail I consider it to be your problem._

_That was a very nice picture of Amy doing homework. I'm glad you're managing to get her to school. Still no pictures of Drew? Grandmother did entrust you with both kids, didn't she? (I'm going to keep asking until you tell me, Vi.)_

_Grandmother still can't take human form, but I heard from one of our supposed cousins at the shrine that she's doing well. However, she's concerned that she hasn't heard from you, especially about the kids. You might want to send her a postcard. Or some pictures. Of both of them?_

_Oh, and I've included a list of funeral home job openings in the southeastern U.S.._

It was signed 'Sunny'.

Was Sunny short for Sunflower? Because she knew she had an aunt named Sunflower -- Violet's human sister. She'd even known, vaguely, that Grandmother was still in touch with Sunflower, but Sunflower preferred to keep her distance from the whole kitsune thing. She'd had _no idea_ that _Violet_ kept in touch with Sunflower, or that either of them had a way to get word to Grandmother.

Amy checked the package's contents carefully. She found the list of mortuary jobs, but no address or telephone number for the "supposed cousins". Not that she was sure what she'd do if she had an address.

Amy usually tried to hang around with -- or at least hang around _near_ \-- the good kids, the overachievers. They weren't always nice to her, but they usually didn't attack her to her face, and it sent the message to teachers that Amy was _trying_. Unfortunately, in the current North Carolina small town being 'good' seemed to require belonging to the local loony-tunes church, and her grandmother's necklace apparently identified her as a devil-worshipper. The school principal confiscated it, despite her protests that it had belonged to her _late grandmother_.

She honestly wasn't sure whether Violet would care. Her mother usually didn't approve of Amy getting too attached to human things and seldom had a good thing to say about her own mother, but she definitely had a sore spot about false accusations of witchcraft. If Violet did care, her response was likely to involve bloodshed, and Amy didn't feel comfortable setting up someone to die. If the situation wasn't resolved by the time they were leaving town, but... she didn't want to _invite_ Violet to kill anyone.

There had to be another way.

Opportunity knocked when she noticed the English teacher confiscating a skull-and-crossbones baseball cap from the sullen boy at the back of the classroom, who was called Bob by the teachers and Buzz by the other students. He'd had what had looked like the same hat confiscated in history the previous week. Amy sought him out at lunch, and finally found him chain-smoking out by the dumpster.

He sneered. "What're you doing here?"

"I wanted to talk to you. Did you get a new hat, or did you get the first one back?"

"Why do you care?"

Amy met his gaze fearlessly. "Because they took my necklace and I want it back."

He spat on the ground. "Have your dad come get it, little girl."

"I don't have a dad and my mom has to work." Or something. And she wasn't a little girl, but he probably realized that. "Look, if you're willing to bring it back, we can talk payment, or if not you could just tell me how to get into the office...?"

After a long pause, Buzz snorted. "The office is easy once you get up in the drop ceiling. He locks the confiscated stuff in a metal cabinet. You know how to pick a lock?"

Amy got her necklace back. She spent the next few months hanging with the bad kids, learning how to case buildings and pick locks and jimmy windows and everything necessary for a life of petty crime. They made fun of her for being a goody-two-shoes and called her Squeaky, short for squeaky-clean, and she did not tell them she'd spent the last six years on the run with her mother the serial killer, who taught her how to kill people. She just grinned and agreed with them and accepted the bottle or the joint or whatever they were handing her. She let Buzz get to third base in the janitor's closet while cutting English, but apparently no one in town had access to any condoms and hello, high, not stupid.

It turned out weed and Everclear made it a lot easier not to think about where the food she ate was coming from. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it before.

It was sheer bad luck that Violet got back when Amy was stoned. She _flipped. out._ and threw Amy through a screen door.

"How stupid _are_ you?" she shouted, as Amy lay at the bottom of the steps and stared hazily at the night sky. "Are you _trying_ to get killed? You're as bad as my parents." She stomped out of the trailer and kicked Amy in the stomach. "Stupid, selfish little self-destructive-- Get up. We're leaving."

When Amy sobered up, she realized it was sheer _good_ luck Violet had gotten back when Amy was _alone_.

It had been _years_ since Amy had really felt able to commiserate with someone on a personal level, years since she'd really laughed over something other than a book. (She'd almost hurt herself laughing over _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ when she realized why the crazy forger had landed them with the surname _Beauregarde_.) She'd even felt safe enough to say a few things about herself -- about Violet. For a minute she forgot why it was such a terrible idea to bring anybody back to the house.

Then Violet came home early. Amy wasn't supposed to talk to boys, she wasn't supposed to talk to anyone, and telling a story about Sam helping her with those other boys would lead to questions on why she hadn't gutted them. Just, no.

Amy hustled Sam into a closet, and prayed he'd stay quiet. "Hey," she said, trying to keep her expression cool.

Violet just looked irate. "They caught up."

"Who caught up?" Grandmother lived in the same apartment in San Francisco with two kids for _eight years_ and never once had to worry about people catching up.

"Couple of pros in a piece-of-crap Impala. We're leaving."

Of course they were. Amy had possibly made a friend. "But, Mom--"

"I'm only gonna say this once -- I put the food on this table, so you will do as you are told or I will let you starve." To illustrate, Violet slammed a jar with a chunk of brain down on the table.

Amy was about to come back with the rejoinder that if Violet ditched her she'd just break into a morgue and get a dead brain, she wasn't a child who needed fresh meat any more -- but Violet was heading towards the closet where she'd shoved Sam. Crap. "Okay. Gas up the van. I'll pack."

"Good girl."

Whew. She tried to get Sam out of the house quick, but first he saw the jar on the table, and then he had a _knife_. "Sam?"

"It's my dad and brother in the Impala. You're a monster."

That meant-- "You're a Hunter. So..." Really? _Really_? The _one time_ \-- "You're supposed to kill me? And I'm supposed to kill you?"

Sam... looked about as happy with the situation as she did, actually. "I guess."

Hunters had killed her human grandmother for being in the wrong place, but maybe not all Hunters...? "Sam, I've never killed anyone." Despite Violet's unsubtle suggestions that she needed to start. "And I don't want to hurt you." Not someone nice, and funny, who stands up for strangers and thinks before he strikes. "Do you want to hurt me?" She held her breath.

"...No."

Thank god. "Then run. If my mom finds you, she'll kill you. Just run. Please, Sam."

Her relief lasted all of twenty seconds, and then it all went to hell. Violet was waiting, and shoved Sam back in.

"I knew you were hiding something. See, we can never blow town without Amy throwing a bitch-fit. So agreeing to go peacefully -- well. Who is this?"

For an insane half-second Amy pictured telling Violet he was a Hunter and he and Amy had arranged a truce, so Violet should go back and settle things with Sam's dad in the piece-of-crap car. "He's my friend."

Violet scoffed. "No, he's not." She gave him a shake, and cut off Amy's protest. "Shut up! What is wrong with you, huh?"

Amy would have to go back to a library and consult a psychology book to recall all the diagnoses she'd given herself, and they _all have to do with Violet_.

"You that stupid? Really?"

No, not really, despite only getting to school like half the time, at most.

"I already told you, you cannot have friends."

Amy might possibly have been willing to go along with that if she could have had _twin_.

"This kid is food!"

"No!"

Violet hit her, and turned back to Sam. "This'll teach you."

_You are... I've been around enough bad to know good when I see it._

_We're good people. We are._

Really? Violet never had to teach Amy anything after that New Mexico night. Amy just had to get old enough to know what to do about it.

For Drew. For Sam. For _Amy_.

Violet's body crumpled like Drew's did. Her expression just looked angry, not surprised at all, but then Violet usually looked angry.

Amy packed in a rush -- cash, change of clothes, toothbrush, hairbrush -- box of store-brand toaster pastries -- beat-up paperback _The Fantastic Mr. Fox_ hiding a creased student of the moment ribbon from an elementary school she'd attended for a few months and a Polaroid of Amy with the rest of the winning Field Day team, five schools after that -- baseball cap and sunglasses. Was she packing too much? She'd never had to be the motivating one in a quick exit before. Violet always dragged her kicking and screaming out of town.

She hurried to the bus station, very aware that there could be _Hunters_ on her tail at any moment. It wasn't that she didn't believe Sam when he said he'd cover for her, but how hard would it be for his family to search the house and realize two people had been living there? She picked a destination almost at random and bought a ticket. She was ready with a story about a sick grandmother if challenged, but the ticket seller and the driver both just looked bored and totally unconcerned with teenagers on buses. There was another passenger in the waiting area who asked if she was all on her own, but he was probably perving on her, so she moved. Fast.

It was late when the bus pulled into Kansas City. Amy had some vague idea of finding a cheap motel to stay in while she figured out what to do next. She brushed off the skeezy guy who offered to show her around the city; fifteen minutes later he ambushed her in the bus station's women's room. She tried to scream for help, she did, but he had a hand over her mouth and she had to fight and the next thing she knew she'd perforated his trachea and esophagus and nicked some major blood vessels.

Amy stared at him gurgling and wheezing on the filthy tile floor, and remembered that Violet's first kill had been a high school classmate who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. Except this guy wasn't her first kill, was he?

She threw up -- in the toilet, not on the guy, but only just. Then she stepped around the growing puddle of blood, washed her hands until the soap dispenser was empty (not very long), and left the bathroom with an 'Out of Order' sign on the door. She got a ticket on the first bus leaving and ended up in Memphis. It was apparently too early in the morning for skeezy guys, because she made it to a diner without any trouble. She ordered coffee and toast and ate half of it, but carbohydrates weren't what she was really hungry for.

She couldn't keep this up.

Amy didn't quite look like she belonged in this neighborhood, but she'd been on the road for over thirty-six hours and was jittery with caffeine and lack of sleep, and her clothes weren't exactly designer-label to begin with. It didn't help with being a blond girl, but at least she didn't look like she was slumming. No one bothered her, in the diner.

So. She wasn't low on money yet, but she would be soon if she kept taking intercity bus every damn day. She wasn't starving for pituitary glands yet, but it had been over a week, and she wasn't sure how long she could push it.

Food first. If she'd been thinking instead of vomiting, she could have avoided this problem. It probably wouldn't be too hard to find someone else who would attack her so she could kill him in self-defense -- and didn't that sound twisted? _Or_ , she could follow through on what she'd imagined saying to Violet, and break into a mortuary. She knew how to break into a building, thanks Buzz.

Who did she want to be?

She dug into her bag, and pulled out the envelope she'd found the cash in. She checked the return address.

Sunny opened her door expecting to find her neighbor needing her own spare key again, so it took her a moment to react to the teenager standing on her doorstep with a battered backpack and her mother's necklace. "...Amy?"

"You're Sunflower -- Sunny?" the girl asked warily.

That didn't answer the question, but Sunny recognized her now. She hadn't seen her niece in person since leaving San Francisco when the kid was two, but Grandmother had sent yearly photos of the twins. More recently, Vi had occasionally condescended to include a Polaroid of Amy -- never Drew -- with her requests for money. "Yes, I'm Sunny. You'd -- is Violet with you? Is she coming?" She had better not be. One of Sunny's conditions for sending money was that Violet _stay out of New England_.

Amy's mouth tightened. "No. She's not. She-- There were Hunters. She's not coming."

A stab of pain, sharper than she'd expected, followed by alarm. "Hunters? Where?"

"Nebraska. They didn't know to follow me." Amy looked down. "I -- didn't know where else to go--"

Most people probably didn't keep their newly-orphaned fifteen-year-old nieces standing on the step while they grilled them, did they? She stepped back hastily. "Come in, come in, of course. Sit down. Would you like some water?"

"Yes, please."

Sunny went to the kitchen, trying to decide how to delicately phrase her next question; she would have asked Vi straight out, probably yelling, but _newly orphaned fifteen-year-old_. A male kitsune and a human woman could have children of either species -- for example, Violet was kitsune and Sunny was human. A kitsune woman always had kitsune children -- for example, Amy and Drew. Which meant Amy had kitsune... dietary requirements. She handed over the water and hovered next to the couch. "Amy, this is a fairly small town, so if you, uh..."

Amy shook her head quickly. "I'm all right for now. And I wouldn't kill anyone in your town."

"I appreciate that. I know Vi had, uh, a different perspective--" Sunny broke off, jumping back as Amy's eyes flashed and her claws extended, shearing through the plastic cup and spilling water on the couch. She could happily have gone another fourteen years without seeing those damn claws. A month before Sunny left her grandmother's house, toddler Drew had come an eighth of an inch short of slashing through her left eye. She still had a faint scar.

"Violet had a different perspective on a _lot of things_ ," Amy said tightly. "I'm a freak, but I'm not a monster." She looked down at the skewered cup. "Sorry. Could I maybe have a towel?"

"Uh, no problem." Sunny retreated to the kitchen, remembering someone else who'd emphasized the difference between _freak_ and _monster_. Violet, at least as an adult, had never seen any point in it. Grandmother honestly didn't find being a kitsune at all freaky. But...

"My mother used to say something like that," she told Amy, handing her a dishtowel. "To my father, I mean, that he was a freak not a monster. She was a pacifist and a _vegetarian_ , but she never left him and she never gave up trying to help him."

Amy eyed her sidelong. "My-- Violet told me they were both really, really stoned most of the time."

"I think they may have been stoned for most of the Sixties."

"I mean, she meant, when they -- when the Hunters--"

Sunny shook her head. "Mom never gave up finding something to make Dad -- and Vi, I guess -- not need the brains. She tried a lot of plants and she tried a lot of drugs, and nothing worked perfectly but she did have some success with some of the mixtures and -- stretching the timetable a little. So they had drugs around, but -- no."

Amy busied herself sopping up the spilled water. "I didn't really think-- I didn't know what to believe with her, a lot of the time."

"She was like that." Before the twins were born, Vi had once called Sunny out of _nowhere_ and claimed to have seduced and eaten Sunny's boyfriend. She hadn't actually had a boyfriend at the time, but she'd ended up frantically checking the welfare of anyone who might have been considered a former boyfriend. She'd never found any fatalities, but Violet had never admitted to lying.

What had Grandmother been _thinking_ , leaving Violet with kids?

Right, that she'd be able to _feed them_.

"Amy," Sunny started, then stopped. "Amy, I can't... I can't handle your... dietary needs." In more ways than one. "But--"

"I broke into a morgue," Amy said. "Uh. In Memphis. I can do that, I don't -- I'm old enough to scavenge."

That... made things a lot easier. "If you can handle that, you can stay here. As long as you need. There's -- high school... driving lessons?" What the hell did she have to offer a kid she couldn't even _feed_?

But Amy was nodding, her expression something that was almost a smile, and apparently a roof and a school was enough of an offer after all.

Violet apparently wasn't a hard act to follow.

As gently as possible, Sunny asked, "Do you want to tell me what happened to Drew?"

Amy sank further down in the couch. "What do you think happened to Drew?"

Some days Sunny pretended she thought Violet had decided boys were icky and traded Drew off to some nice kitsune she met on the road for some magic beans, and that she was too embarrassed to explain this, which was why she never mentioned him or responded to any questions about him. Sometimes she pretended to wonder if Drew had turned out to be actually human, leading Violet to abandon him and pretend he'd never existed, but since she'd seen Drew's claws that was more out there than the magic beans.

"I think Violet killed him, sometime in the first three months. I don't know whether it was on purpose."

"Sometime in the first three days," Amy said distantly. "And it was on purpose."

That had pretty much been her worst-case scenario. Sunny rubbed her eyes. "Violet... wasn't the same, after our parents were killed. I think she gave up on being human. The last time we actually spoke was before you were born -- every time we talked we'd get in a screaming fight, she'd threaten to eat me, and I'd say she should have died instead of Mom and Dad, and Grandmother suggested maybe we should write letters instead."

"Were you ever afraid she would?"

"Eat me? Grandmother was always nearby, so... not really. Sometimes I thought she wanted to, though, and she could be really impulsive."

"So why keep in touch with her at all?"

Sunny shrugged. "Partly because of you and Drew, and because she _wasn't_ sending any word to Grandmother. I knew next to nothing, but it was more than Grandmother got otherwise." Partly because she was buying her sister off not to show up on her doorstep -- or in New England -- but maybe Amy didn't need to know that. "Partly because I really, really didn't want her to do something stupid and get herself killed by Hunters. I don't like Hunters any more than she does -- did. Whatever Violet deserved, they didn't deserve to finish that job. Mom and Dad _died_ keeping them from finishing that job." She looked at her niece carefully. "So -- I'm only going to say this once. It's okay, Amy, if she wasn't killed by Hunters."

At a little before one on Saturday morning, the party at Patrick Miller's uncle's farm was probably still going strong. Rumor had it some of the band kids were going to crash the party with a couple of trombones and a taxidermied deer head, which... yeah, she didn't want to know what they thought they were doing, except for how she really did.

As a senior, Amy had been invited to the party. (She still wasn't used to being something other than the freaky quiet new kid, but she'd slid into being a nonentity, after the first rush of rumors about why she was suddenly living with her aunt.) She told herself she didn't want to be there to see people puking Everclear into the bushes and hear Mike and Julia dry-humping in the hayloft, but given how she had to spend the evening instead, it actually sounded pretty appealing.

Every other Friday night was Feeding Time. Amy called it Feeding Time. Sunny, of course, didn't call it anything. She just got in the car and drove Amy to some larger town and dropped her off outside some funeral home, and then went to see a movie or something. Amy just had to get in, get her 'supplements', and get out. She planned and re-planned what to say if she got caught, but fortunately it hadn't come up yet. As Feeding Time approached, Amy always felt tired, irritable and incessantly hungry, all of which suggested that every two weeks was pushing it on how often a kitsune needed to eat... supplements. Amy never said anything, though, because she was pretty sure every two weeks was also pushing it -- in the other direction -- for how often Sunny could stand being reminded about supplements. (Her aunt didn't even eat _cheese_.)

The problem was, while 'supplements' marinated in embalming fluid retained their nutritional value, they also acquired _side effects_. At best, she'd feel dizzy and have a headache in the morning. The absolute worst was vomiting, which made the whole thing _pointless_. Usually it was somewhere in the middle, and she ended up spending most of Saturday curled around a pillow, clutching a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and watching pirated Japanese cartoons with bad amateur subtitles.

At the moment, she was curled around a pillow, clutching a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and failing to get any sleep. Her stomach _hurt_. Damn formaldehyde.

Her window screen rattled. Something moved outside.

Amy frowned. They did get raccoons, but usually not on the second--

Something came _through_ her window, without a sound from the screen. Amy lurched up and flailed for the bedside lamp with one hand, keeping the other, claws out, between her and the thing -- briefly, before she had to pull the claws in to clamp her hand over her mouth. She was still forcing back the retching when she got the light on and saw--

A fox. A fox with three tails.

"Hello, Amy," said the fox. "I am Reizei Mitsue. My brother Mitsuharu is here, too, but I told him it's rude for a gentleman to burst into a lady's room at night." The fox paused to lick a paw. "I'm a vixen, so it doesn't count."

Either the embalming fluid was having a new and different effect, or there was a three-tailed kitsune sitting in her bedroom. "What--" _Manners._ "May I ask what you're doing here?"

"As you might imagine, your great-grandmother was very upset that leaving you with your mother turned out so badly. She was also concerned that living with your aunt would not give you the guidance or the opportunity to move _forward_ with life as a kitsune. Mitsuharu and I have been amusing ourselves in North America for some time, but when we first came over here we were little two-tails making human faces with ten-inch noses and speaking a dialect of English older than we were, and your great-grandmother and her mother took us into their home and made sure we knew what we were about. Now that you're almost done with human basic education, we thought we'd drop in and offer to show you around, help out a bit while you get your bearings. Would you like some help?"

"I... yes, thank you--" What in the world was the proper term of respect for a tailed kitsune offering to lead you out of your purgatory of a life? "Thank you, ma'am. I can't say--" And then she literally couldn't say, because she had to cover her mouth again. The her stomach contents made it at least halfway up her esophagus, burning the whole time, until she forced them back. "Excuse me, ma'am," Amy rasped, and opened the Pepto-Bismol.

"Please, call me Mitsue," said the fox. "I'm sure we'll have lots of fun together -- tell me, little sister, what do you want to do with your future?"

Amy lowered the bottle and wiped sweat from her forehead. "All I can think of right now is becoming a mortician and getting in before the embalmment."

Mitsue introduced herself to Sunny wearing the shape of a young Japanese woman with fox-red hair, tails visible. She looked exactly like a tailed kitsune, and Sunny had no trouble accepting her as one, which was presumably the point. Sunny seemed to assume this was Mitsue's real form and Mitsue didn't correct her, but she mentioned to Amy that a tailed kitsune's only true form was quadrupedal and furry. They often had preferred human forms, but it was only a matter of preference.

Mitsuharu, it turned out, had been at Amy's high school since the beginning of the year -- as Mia Huntworthy, the new math teacher. At least this explained why the staff and two-thirds of the students thought Miss Huntworthy was an ordinary, if pretty, teacher, and the other third thought she was smoking hot and dressed to kill. At Amy's request, Mitsuharu showed her what her drooling classmates were seeing differently: bust size (larger), skirt (shorter), blouse (tighter and less buttoned), heels (higher), makeup (more obvious), and mannerisms (just... _sexier_ ). "What can I say?" he asked, smirking. "I'm a _fox_." Mitsue threw a pinecone at him.

The school guidance counselor was weirded out when Amy asked about mortuary science programs, but Amy vaguely implied something about a family business on her father's side, and the guidance counselor had Huntworthy-obsessed students to worry about. Amy got the information and set about trying to choose a school. It was a choice she pretty much had to make on her own. Sunny didn't know much about trade schools, and as for Mitsue and Mitsuharu--

"Hmm, you go to school to work with bodies? In my day, you just found an undertaker who needed an apprentice, and there usually wasn't much competition." Having made Sunny fumble her coffee and almost startled Amy out of her chair, Mitsuharu hopped onto the table for a closer look at the application.

"Please don't get pawprints on that. You have to get certified before most places will hire you," Amy explained, looking around for Mitsue. There she was -- also in fox form, sitting on top of the microwave.

Mitsuharu _hmm_ ed. "There are many excellent things about this modern day, but I cannot get behind this paperwork for _everything_."

"But the advantage is you can change your shape without actually changing your shape, if you change your papers," Mitsue said, and hopped from microwave to counter and counter to floor. She padded to the table, then flowed up to human-shape. "Amy Gustafson is your only active persona, isn't it?"

Amy Wilmott lived in San Francisco with her grandmother and her twin, and Amy Baudelaire had left Nebraska in a hurry and possibly a dead body behind her, if Sam's family didn't clean up. "...Yeah."

"Gustafson is her _legal_ name," Sunny added. "It's on her birth certificate."

It was easy to forget that Sunny had actually been there -- well, in the next room -- when Amy and Drew were born. Once she'd left, she'd never come back. "No one knows what happened to my birth certificate after Violet cleared out of San Francisco," Amy pointed out. "But I don't see any reason not to be Amy Gustafson at school."

"At school, yes, but you might want to think about constructing a persona or two for after that, just in case." Mitsue held up a hand as Sunny opened her mouth. "Shield the Gustafson identity from any messes."

Amy could see how there could be messes. "Do you have something in mind?"

"The six-tailed forger can put together a complete set of documents with simulated paper trail for a thousand dollars--"

Sunny winced. "Oh, is _that_ what Vi needed all that money for?"

"Ah, no, actually." Mitsuharu flicked his tails. "He doesn't charge tailless kitsune with children who are also kitsune. And he always knows, somehow."

Someone snarled -- _Sunny_ snarled. "Oh, not this _again_. What is _with_ this attitude that tailless kitsune are supposed to be baby factories? It's the twenty-first century!"

"Well, I can tell you why tailed kitsune see it that way," Mitsue said mildly. "Any children we have with humans are human, and any children we have with each other are fox-shaped and without a hint of magic unless and until they live to one hundred, as a small, unmagical fox. Tailless kitsune are where you get more kitsune."

"Yeah, well, some people shouldn't be encouraged to have children because they _can't handle it_. I don't know what Grandmother was _thinking_ \--"

She had a point, but Amy didn't need anyone picking fights when she was trying to work on her damn application. "Maybe Violet left me alive for the free paperwork," she interrupted. At the rate Violet went though identities, that would have piled up fast. "Could you help me cover the cost, Sunny? And does he always give people weird names?"

"I think he gives you whatever he can get away with..."

The next time she had Mitsue alone, Amy asked, "Is the forger behind Miss _Huntworthy_?"

"Sadly, no. That was all Mitsuharu."

Mitsue's knock on the apartment door was greeted by silence; when she knocked again, there was a muffled call of, "I'm sick, go away!"

When the third knock garnered no response, Mitsue stepped back and waved her hand in front of the doorknob -- once, twice, three times, and the lock snapped open.

"Are you going to make me wait in the hall again?" Mitsuharu asked. His whiny-little-boy tone was particularly incongruous coming from the mouth of a distinguished elderly man.

"As long as you look like that, you can. I keep telling you, you need to practice looking like any old human -- and your tails are showing."

Amy was in bed with the blankets over her head. When Mitsue came in, a hand appeared long enough to make a rude gesture. "Go away."

"Don't you have things to be doing, Amy? Apprenticeships to look for, bags to pack -- all the things a mortuary science student should be doing a few months after graduation?"

"Umph," said the bed. The covers moved, and Amy's face appeared. "Do you know what a mortuary science student _shouldn't_ do a few days after graduation?"

Mitsue sat on the edge of the bed and took fox-form. "Challenge an okami to a wrestling match?"

"Go to a party, get drunk, and have sex with a newly minted EMT who runs off looking like he's about to throw up when he finds out what your degree's in."

"Ouch." Mitsue had had a few bad experiences with men overreacting to her being a kitsune, but that was really more understandable. "I hope you weren't too attached to him."

"Well, I _wasn't_." Amy sat up. "I was on the Pill, Mits. I never missed a dose."

'The Pill' meant... "Oh. _Oh_." And now that she knew what to look for... yes. "Congratulations?"

"No! I was taking birth control for a reason, and I am _not_ happy to be in the -- whatever percent it is where it fails."

Mitsue winced. "I'm not certain, but I think human birth control might not work for tailless kitsune. Things work -- differently, and you're only fertile two months a year anyway-- You didn't know that?"

"How would I?" Amy asked wearily. "I was eight when Grandmother left, I'm sure Sunny had no idea, and the most Violet said on the subject of sex was that if I screwed anyone without tidying up loose ends, she'd do it for me."

That... really did not imply anything good about the whereabouts of Amy's unknown father. "I'm sorry, Amy. This is just the sort of thing you need to know from me, and I assumed you'd heard it from Violet." She should have known better than to assume Violet had done _anything_ good or useful. (Killing _one twin_ \-- part of the reason Mitsue and Mitsuharu had been tagged for this was that under the circumstances, they could see the possibility of justifiable matricide, where a lot of kitsune would have trouble with it.)

Amy shrugged listlessly. "Nothing to be done about it now. I assume condoms work, since I never had any trouble before."

"I assume so."

"It's just -- we were all saying that if we saw another latex glove we were going to scream, you know? And-- Never mind."

"Do you know what you're going to do?"

"No. I'm sure Grandmother would be very happy I'm _propogating_. _Sunny_ would be _horrified_ , because she knows what's involved in feeding a little kitsune. And I -- god, I never planned to have kids." Amy rubbed her face. "What do you think?"

Mitsue decided to shift back to human-shape, this time approximating her own tailless form. "Amy, I'm from a very different time. I--"

"You think I should keep it."

"Everything I grew up with says you should keep it," Mitsue corrected. "I think you're the one living tailless in this time, you're the one with the most at stake, and I will do my best to support you whatever you choose."

"Thank you," Amy whispered.

There was a moment of silence, broken by Mitsuharu calling from the hall. "Can I come in?"

"No!" Mitsue and Amy both called back.

Amy laughed tiredly. "Does he ever drag you places and then refuse to let you come in?"

"Yes. In SeaWorld. He sneaks into the tanks to commune with the orcas, but he says I agitate them."

"I can see how an agitated orca would be a bad thing." Amy pulled her knees up. "I guess... it's not so much I don't want to be a mother as I don't want to be _my_ mother. And I don't, I really don't want to kill people."

Mitsue nodded. "If that's really how you feel, we can help you."

"I don't want you to have to--"

Mitsue held up a hand. "It's fresh enough to sustain children if it is taken from a body on the cusp of death, and acquisition is very simple when you have the power to turn invisible and phase through solid objects." The kind of phasing required to grab something solid out from the middle of something else solid, with no other damage, was actually a bit challenging for a three-tail, but she was sure they'd manage. "Neat, quiet, and without cruelty. The worst it gets is confused coroners."

"I've heard, uh, heard a few stories about some coroners who could do with a little confusing." There -- now she was relaxing. "If you're sure--"

"I'm sure. _We're_ sure. Mitsuharu! We're going to be godparents!"

Amy preferred cats but, all folktales aside, didn't really have a _problem_ with dogs. They reacted to her like a human, not a fox. (She'd encountered a few experienced hunting dogs that seemed to find her endlessly confusing, but that had been more funny than anything else.)

She was really perplexed when being around her new neighbor's fluffy little teddy-bear dog made her hair stand on end. It was _ridiculous_. She kept feeling the urge to grab Jacob and get the hell out of town, or at least out of the building, but Sunny had helped her with the deposit for the apartment and she did not want to risk losing it.

Mitsue was entirely un-perplexed. "So, you're next door to a coyote?"

"I -- what? It's a -- bish-something."

"No, it's a skinwalker."

Amy blinked. Grandmother had mentioned skinwalkers, but-- "It's a little fluffy dog."

"Five hundred years ago skinwalkers were wolves or coyotes. These days nine-tenths of them are some kind of dog." Mitsue smirked. "Most of them are slightly _larger_ dogs, but regardless, they feel like coyotes to us, and foxes prefer to avoid coyotes."

"How on Earth did they get from wolves and coyotes to little fluffy doggies?"

"I'm sure I don't know." Mitsue shrugged. "Strange things happen, sometimes. I'm half-expecting some of you American-bred tailless to turn out gray foxes, there just -- hasn't been time for the transition, yet."

"Huh. So why is the skinwalker posing as--" As a little fluffy doggy _doted_ upon by its adoring human, spoiled and pampered and never having to do anything _remotely_ resembling work? "Never mind. Can it tell about -- about me and Jacob?"

"I don't know for sure, but I would expect he can tell there's something unusual but doesn't recognize it."

Amy was careful, but she never had any coyote problems with Mr. Fluffernutter.

Then some maniac with a gun shot at Fran and Mr. Fluffernutter when they were on a walk, killed Mr. Fluffernutter -- with a _silver bullet_ , what was _wrong_ with people? Amy split town as soon as she could. She told everyone she didn't feel safe in the neighborhood anymore, and she wasn't lying even a little bit.

Amy and Jacob March had lived next door to Mr. Fluffernutter. When Amy called for new papers, the forger suggested Madison, but sharing a name with a fictional witch would probably give Sunny anxiety attacks, so Amy nixed it. Then he tried Rose, which she might have fallen for were it not for some gamer friends at school. (She'd put up with March, but a pink hedgehog was crossing the damned line.) Finally, he offered Pond -- it didn't sound like a really common surname, but a quick internet search uncovered no embarrassing namesakes, so she went with it.

Amy and Jacob Pond moved to Bozeman, MT.

("Look at it this way," Mitsue offered a few years later. "If anyone's looking for you online, they'll never find you by name.")

Mitsuharu appeared in their living room as a mid-thirties Japanese man with three very bushy fox tails -- never a good sign -- and carrying a bulky duffel bag. Jacob immediately lost interest in his peas. "Haru's here!" he announced, delighted.

Amy rose hastily to her feet. "Mitsuharu, we weren't expecting you. Come -- never mind. Is Mitsue here?"

"She'll be here soon, she's scouting around the neighborhood." Mitsuharu set down the duffel, which thumped. He looked... spooked, but smiled at Jacob. "You being good for your mother, Jacob?"

"Uh-huh! Present?"

Mitsuharu winced. "Tell you what, I'll bring two next time."

Jacob looked outraged.

"We're just finishing dinner," Amy said hastily. "Help yourself if you want any, we'll be done in a minute. Jacob--"

"No present no peas," Jacob replied.

This was going to be fun.

Despite Amy's best efforts, she had to put Jacob to bed early and clean up a shredded pillow, not to mention the peas in Jacob's hair. She didn't know how Grandmother had managed her and Drew at once. After she got him to sleep and put on a clean shirt, she came back to find Mitsuharu and Mitsue sitting in the kitchen, sharing the bottle of sake they'd given her for Christmas. "Uh, hi."

"We got you a glass," Mitsue said. "Sit down, Amy, this is going to be... a long story."

The story started with "Demons are real" and stayed there for quite a while, with a tangent on Mitsuharu's negative opinion of various long-dead missionaries. It moved on to "There's a thing called a Devil's Gate, and it just opened for a while and let a lot of demons out". The story did not stay there very long, as Mitsue and Mitsuharu had heard it from a six-tail who hadn't given any details beyond the involvement of a powerful demon even before the gate opened. It finished up with "There's probably going to be a lot of demonic activity in middle America, and we'd feel better if you knew some ways to protect yourself".

"This is crazy," Amy said. Mitsue took her fox-form. "Oh, _stop_ that, I didn't say I didn't believe you. What do you want to tell me?"

The main thing was salt -- which was what was in Mitsuharu's duffel, twenty pounds of rock salt. There was also a Hindu exorcism, and because it was more commonly used, a Catholic exorcism. ("I think she heard you the first time, Mitsuharu, you don't like missionaries.") And--

"You might want to consider setting up a _kamidana_ \-- a household altar," Mitsue said finally, sounding reluctant. "Holy ground sometimes puts them off. You shouldn't if it doesn't feel right, though."

"I'll... have to think about that one," Amy said. "But thank you. This is-- _Demons_?"

Mitsue sipped her sake, and Matsuharu muttered a rude comment about Abrahamic religions in general.

Several years passed without Amy actually _seeing_ a demon, or any really terrible omens around Bozeman. While it was tempting to try blame them for all the crazy, terrible things which happened around the world, it just wasn't plausible. Mitsue and Mitsuharu were left twitching their tails on the sidelines while their elders observed... whatever was happening... and Amy and the rest of the tailless were much more sidelined than that. When whatever it was stopped, they were all relieved.

Jacob was trying to lure Smokey back inside when a dark shape shot out of the bushes and crashed into his legs. For a second he thought it _was_ the cat, but--

"Jacob," it croaked.

"Haru? You're--" Hurt. Staggering. _Missing two tails._ "I'll get Mom."

He picked up Mitsuharu as carefully as he could, but the kitsune still yipped in pain when Jacob shifted him to get the door open. He carefully closed the door. " _Mom!_ "

"I'm doing laundry, Jacob--"

"Mom, it's _Haru_! He's _hurt_!"

Mom appeared in the doorway, and her eyes widened. "Fuck! Mitsuharu? Haru? Can you hear me?"

"Amy," he managed. "Demons. Pur-- _Mitsue._ " He shuddered and went limp, and Jacob could see his panic reflected in his mother's face before they both saw Mitsuharu was still breathing.

"Okay," Mom said. "Okay. Jacob, take him to my-- No, the couch in the basement, I'll be right there."

Trembling, Jacob obeyed. The basement was cool despite the summer heat outside, and the tile floor was cold, so he tucked his feet under him on the couch and cradled his godfather in his arms. Haru's tails weren't just gone, they were _stubs_ , ragged and raw and oozing blood. Had demons done this? But wasn't the big demon thing supposed to be done with?

Tigger disappeared behind a bookshelf. Tigger was better at being an indoor cat than Smokey, but was terrified of foxes.

It felt like forever until Mom ran down the stairs, but it couldn't have been very long. She handed him several blankets and two bottles of water. "We have to keep him warm, and give him some water if you can," she said. Mom opened the salt bag she'd had under her arm and poured a thick circle on the floor, all the way around the couch. When she was done, she set the bag on the floor inside the circle and pulled out her phone. She frowned, moved to the bottom of the stairs, and checked the phone again.

"No reception?" Jacob asked anxiously. Let her not go upstairs!

"No, I should have enough here--" She _beep_ ed through the menus; whatever number she picked had an awful lot of digits.

"Are you calling--"

Mom held up a hand. "I'm Amy Gustafson -- do you speak--? Oh thank god. Reizei Mitsuharu just came to my house in Bozeman, Montana. He's been -- mutilated, and he said it was demons and I think they're holding Mitsue. He's unconscious now. I didn't know where else to-- All right. All right, thank you. Thank you." She carefully set the phone down on the fifth step up -- so it would get reception if they called back, Jacob guessed. Then, after a pause, she grabbed the salt and went to put a salt line at the top of the stairs. That done, she came to sit with them on the couch. She slid an arm behind him, and Jacob leaned into her.

"They're sending someone," Mom said. "They said to sit tight and stay safe."

"I'm scared," Jacob whispered.

Mom hugged him. "Me too. We just need to stay behind the salt. It will be okay."

Jacob wondered how they were supposed to go to the bathroom from behind the salt. Before it became necessary to ask Mom, ten people with fox tails appeared in their little basement. One of them (six tails) knocked over the TV, and another (nine tails) had to catch it.

A woman with eight dancing tails said something in rapid Japanese, then, "I'm a healer. Let me see him?"

It was harder to let go than Jacob expected, but he let the eight-tail lift Mitsuharu to the coffee table. Mom hugged him tighter, and he buried his face in her t-shirt, watching with one eye as the eight-tail checked Mitsuharu's eyes and then blew in his nose. Mitsuharu jerked awake and struggled to get away, but another kitsune -- definitely more than six tails, seven? -- bent down and stilled him with just a hand on the head.

The new kitsune -- a nine-tail? -- spoke in Japanese, and Mitsuharu replied in the same language. He sounded so hurt! The new kitsune spoke reassuringly, then seemed to send Mitsuharu to sleep with another touch. The -- eight, nine, _ten_ tails? -- kitsune spoke a few words to the healer woman, who bowed, picked Mitsuharu up, and disappeared.

The new kitsune, who had at least fifteen tails and Jacob was sure they were only supposed to have nine at most, turned to Mom and Jacob. "You've done well, little sister, little brother," said the many-tailed fox. "Mitsuharu will recover given time. We'll go now and save Mitsue."

"I thought -- I thought demons usually didn't bother with tailed kitsune?" Mom said. "It's not -- not because--"

"The demons wanted information, little sister -- nothing to do with you. I hope even they have the wisdom to realize that what three-tails don't know, tailless don't know, but you should be careful all the same. Be safe." He touched Mom briefly on the forehead--

And then all the tailed kitsune were gone, and they were alone in the basement with a lot of salt.

"Who was he?" Jacob whispered.

"I don't know -- don't know if it was male, even, they say you can hide that once you're an eight-tail, and he... I couldn't _count_ how many tails he had."

Jacob nodded into her shoulder. "When he said Mitsuharu and Mitsue would be all right, I believed him, even though -- even though--"

"I know what you mean," Mom said. "I believe him too." She picked up the bloodied blanket from the coffee table. "Was Tigger down here?"

"I think he's behind the bookshelf."

"Of course he is."

They never saw any demons. It was actually a couple of months before it really occurred to Jacob that with Mitsue and Mitsuharu unavailable, they were without a source of fresh supplements. He didn't say anything, because it was pretty clear his mom already knew. She tried weirder and weirder things to get supplements as close to fresh as possible, but it was just -- not fresh enough.

And more time passed, and Jacob got sick.

_The Fox and the Hound_ was one of Amy's least favorite movies, almost entirely because she over-identified with the damn fox. Drew had loved it because he over-identified with the fox, and watched it a million times until Amy had bad dreams and actually asked Grandmother whether they'd have to go live in a game preserve when they grew up. Grandmother hadn't laughed at her, even though seven was kind of old to be entertaining the possibility, and had made Drew cut back a little, and watch Disney's _Robin Hood_ instead; that had foxes too.

Drew liked _The Fox and the Hound_ because Tod was heroic and saved the day and found True Love and lived happily ever after. Amy hated it because Tod had to leave his foster mom and the home he'd grown up in to go live in the woods, and his best friend -- Copper the hound -- turned on him even if he did save his life in the end, and he almost got killed just after saving the day, just because of how he was born. Being Robin Hood would be cool. Being Tod would suck.

She never showed the movie to Jacob, of course, and she hadn't thought of it in years when she realized she'd picked up a Copper to her Tod.

_"Sam?"_

In fairness to Sam, she _had_ killed people, and deliberately, if unhappily. Sam was much more open-minded than Copper. It still sucked to be Tod.

Leaving town wasn't the same as having to go live in a game preserve, she tried to convince herself; they could build a new life pretty much like the old one. It wasn't like the movie.

Then again, in the movie, the hunter didn't sneak back when the hound's back was turned and kill the fox.

At the last, Amy was angry at Sam's brother, because couldn't he understand she was _trying_ , and angry at Sam, because had it been _necessary_ to tell the brother, but mostly she was angry at herself -- for not changing the plates, yes, but also for getting noticed in the first place. She'd remembered what Grandmother said about choosing targets; why hadn't she disguised the kills? _Fire a gun into the puncture site and no one will be able to tell anything's missing._ She didn't have a gun, but she should have done something. She should have known they couldn't manage without Mitsue and Mitsuharu and begged that many-tailed kitsune to take them to Japan.

She hoped Jacob got away. She hoped he remembered how to call Sunny collect, and that she took the call, and that she got him to his kin fast, because dropping Jacob off outside a funeral home wouldn't work.

She hoped seeing his mother killed by a Hunter wouldn't do to Jacob what it had done to Violet.

She wished she'd had a chance to get that first tail.

Sunny resisted the urge to fling the phone across the room. "Look. My niece is dead. My grand-nephew's father is a Japanese citizen who now lives there full-time and can't travel. What paperwork do I need to get the kid--" Something shattered in the living room, and Jacob made an inarticulate noise. "Hell. That's the kid. I'll call back."

She ended the call and growled under her breath. She had the contacts and the money to get whatever documents she needed -- the forger had been very understanding -- but no one seemed to be able to tell her exactly what documents those were. Months had passed, Jacob was still in Maine, and Sunny was starting to run low on the freeze-dried 'supplements' Amy had sent the year before "in case of emergency". Sunny had been disgusted at the time, but she'd kept them, and now she was glad she had. Poor Amy. Poor Jacob.

Speaking of whom, Jacob had destroyed his water glass and was staring white-faced at the TV. "That's him."

Sunny blinked. "What?" Some kind of special news report was on, about some sick, sick serial killers.

Jacob pointed at one of the faces on the screen. "That's him. He killed my mom. He killed my mom, and I didn't stop him, and now he's killing--"

"Aw, sweetie, come here." She pulled him into her arms and let him sob into her sweater. "You couldn't have stopped him, Jacob. And they'll get him. They'll get him and he won't hurt anyone ever again."

When the Winchesters were reported killed, it seemed to take an enormous weight off Jacob -- freed his grief from the burden of hatred and dread and the feeling of _obligation_. After doing some research, Sunny wasn't so sure the Winchesters were dead -- permanently dead, anyway. She wasn't even sure the spotlight-hungry butchers who'd caught all the attention were the same butchers who'd murdered her niece. (Butcher, singular, maybe. Before he saw the news broadcast, Jacob had said the first Hunter let them go.)

She didn't say anything to Jacob. Let him have his relief, and with any luck soon he'd be in Japan and insulated from any future Winchester news.

Her parents were murdered by Hunters. Her niece was murdered by Hunters. Her sister -- well, Violet was too much of a human-hunter herself for that to be murder, and considering Amy's cageyness about the story, Hunters might not have actually killed her. So she'll let them off the hook for Violet. And Amy killed and Robert killed and April knew Robert was killing and didn't tell anyone, but they _tried_. They tried to make the best of the no-tailed kitsune's curse and they never killed anyone because they wanted to. (...Never killed anyone human because they wanted to, since, as mentioned, Amy, Violet, cageyness.)

Sunny works at a wildlife sanctuary. She doesn't like Hunters.

**Alternate Epilogue**

_(For People Who Don't Like Downer Endings)_

Jacob was crying. Not scraped-knee crying -- this was crying like after Mitsuharu had been tortured by the demon. Amy sat up and started to call for him--

Except what came out was a _huff_ noise, and she had just scrabbled out of her bloodstained shirt, and she was just about tripping on her necklace, the chain of which was catching in her fur.

What. The. Hell.

So Sam's hardcase older brother had killed her, and now she was a fox. What the hell. Jacob was still crying, worry about that first. He was curled against the wall, but he didn't smell _physically_ hurt -- just crying like she had in the back seat of a car, when she'd woken up and Drew was still dead. Amy _huff_ ed again, and padded closer. Dammit, she needed to _talk_! Jacob didn't react until she actually put her paws on his knees and licked him on the nose.

He started. "What--" Jacob stared. "...Mommy?"

Amy nosed him again.

Jacob looked from her, to the empty pile of clothes, then back to her. " _Mom_." He threw his arms around her, but loosened his hold before she had to yip at him. "But -- what _happened_?"

Amy kind of wanted to know that, too. You got your first tail through meditation and natural metamorphosis when you were one hundred, not by getting killed when you weren't even thirty.

Of course her tail seemed _disgustingly_ short and stubby...

Convincing Sunny was harder than convincing Jacob -- she didn't have that immediate recognition, and she wasn't very good at figuring out what Amy was trying to communicate, since she kept trying to apply knowledge of straight fox body language and it just didn't work. Spelling with letters written on pieces of paper on the floor, however, convinced her, and they were off to Maine.

For a while it felt like they had every tailed kitsune in the continental United States dropping in to see the 'miracle'. A seven-tailed kitsune offered the suggestion that she had survived because she had received the blessing of the First Fox -- the many-tailed kitsune -- the year before. (Sunny seemed to have an alternate theory involving the necklace, something to do with April Gustafson's love for her family and her death at the hands of Hunters giving her necklace the power to save her granddaughter from Hunters thirty years later. She never came out and said it, though, possibly because it really was a "kinda Harry Potter" idea.) Whatever the cause, they generally agreed that Amy couldn't expect to develop shapeshifting or other powers -- maybe not even human speech -- until she was at least one hundred, and that her tail would probably slowly grow to be the proper size.

Amy and Jacob were both going to go to Japan, as soon as Sunny came up with the papers for international transit of child and fox. They needed to be somewhere with adults who could easily understand Amy and get Jacob fresh glands when he needed them. Amy was just going to have to suck it up and learn to understand Japanese. She got Sunny to dig out her old anime collection -- bizarrely, the fansub VHS appeared to have been replaced with legally purchased DVDs -- and found some kid-friendly stuff to watch with Jacob.

They'd just finished one disc, and Amy was nosing through the discs looking for something which did not involve giant robots (no need to get his hopes up too high), when Jacob gasped.

The Winchesters were on television.

Well, maybe.

That wasn't the Sam she'd met. Dean had _killed_ her, or tried to, but he hadn't been _happy_ about it. Something was really really off--

She saw Jacob's expression, and stepped on the OFF button on the remote. The sound cut off abruptly, leaving them listening to Sunny on the phone trying to explain that it wasn't a custody _fight_ , just an international custody _transfer_ , and if they'd just name the paperwork--

"They were--" Jacob started.

She couldn't begrudge Jacob his hatred of Dean, not when she'd killed Violet mostly over Drew, but she couldn't bring herself to bear Sam any ill will. The people on TV were not the men she'd met. There was more going on here -- and she wasn't letting her son anywhere near it.

MAYBETHEMMAYBENOT, Amy spelled. WERELEAVINGSOON. WELLOUTOFIT.

"I promised I'd kill him," Jacob said.

ALSOPROMISEDTOEATTOFUINYOURPOCKETS.

"Aw, _Mom_ \--"

ENOUGHTVFORNOW. FINDPHRASEBOOK.

"It's right here--"

They sat on Sunny's couch together, Jacob tripping over Japanese phrases and Amy pretending she knew whether he was doing it right.

It wasn't how she expected to spend her life waiting for her first tail, but there were good points. She'd never have to eat another pituitary gland. She could do something about the mice Sunny wouldn't stop complaining about but also couldn't bring herself to trap.

She's been through worse. They'll be okay.

_\--The End--_

**Biographical notes:**

_  
Kasumi Sohda was born in California about 1918, the only child of a kitsune father and human mother. Both were born in Japan, but met in the United States. Because of her marriage, Kasumi got to go stay with her husband's aunt in Philadelphia instead of being interned, but her parents were sent to camps. Her mother died of pneumonia, her father of a mysterious wasting disease that baffled doctors -- pituitary gland starvation, since there was no way to subtly feed locked up in a camp. Kasumi believed he chose to starve to death rather than escape in order to avoid drawing attention to her._

_James Wilmott married a Japanese-American woman (more or less) in California in the early 1940s, and to hell with what anyone thought about it. He was a military officer and served in Europe in WWII. Even before the war, but especially after it, he tried to judge people without consideration of race or ancestry. He died in a car crash in the 50s. He never knew about the kitsune thing, but Kasumi likes to think he would have been all right with it._

_Robert Wilmott worked as a hospital orderly or morgue attendant most of his adult life. In the right places, people just didn't ask questions about extra holes in the bodies. He felt very guilty about taking advantage of people's lack of power to eat their brains, even though they weren't using them any more. When Violet was young and needed fresh meat, Robert would set himself up as bait and kill the first serious attacker. April struggled with this necessity. A lot._

_April Gustafson was a witch inasmuch as she was a devout Wiccan. She had an altar, an athame, a book of secrets, and no quantifiable magical abilities. Besides Gardnerian neopaganism, April mixed in some mysticism she'd been told was 'Oriental' but which was actually more made up. She protested for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, was strictly nonviolent, and never married Robert because she believed marriage to be a cultural artifact of male chauvinism._

_Hunters found them because Violet killed (and ate the brains of) two boys who attacked her. Robert saw them coming and got Violet (15) and Sunny (13) into a closet. The Hunters killed April first, when she was trying to talk them down and they decided she was casting a spell on them -- close range in the face with a shotgun, i.e., blew her head off. Robert then attacked the nearest Hunter before being killed himself. Robert could have killed him with claws-to-the-throat, but aimed for the belly instead: a Hunter with a dead friend would burn the whole house down, but a Hunter with a badly wounded friend might pull back to get him help and give Vi and Sunny a chance to escape._

_Sunny believed Violet was broken by their parents' murder and the events leading up to it (she was assaulted, she killed people for the first time, her actions led to Hunters coming to town and killing her parents, gruesomely, pretty much in front of her), and that it was their grandmother's job to make sure Violet got help even if she didn't want any. Instead, Grandmother let Violet do her own thing and never seemed to see her as a damaged broken person with lots of sharp edges who shouldn't be left with anything vulnerable. Also, how hellishly old-fashioned is it to suggest a kitsune should have kids even if she doesn't want kids? April would have _flipped_._

_Sunny is vegan, but understands the idea of an obligate carnivore, and when it comes to her relatives doesn't take issue with what they eat so long as it's not human. She admires her mother but doesn't feel she can ever live up to her. She thinks her grandmother mishandled Violet badly and still can't believe she left the kids with her. She'd kind of like to be neopagan but is afraid of being murdered over it._

_For a few weeks in kindergarten, Drew had terrible nightmares based loosely on the ending of_ Fox in Socks _. In middle school, Amy started to write a book report of_ Redwall _, but realized two pages later it had turned into a diatribe about the offensive portrayal of foxes, and decided maybe she'd better choose another book.  
_

**Additional author's notes:**

Mitsue and Mitsuharo are three hundred-some years old. I attempted to give them remotely period-appropriate names using [this page](http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/miscellany/names.html), but I'm not sure how well I succeeded.

I have no personal experience with late-'90s US anime fandom (the dark days before widespread high-speed internet), so I referred to [Wikipedia's account of the history of fansubs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fansub#History). Amy probably got in contact with a university anime club of some description for her VHS tapes. Sunny later purchased replacement DVDs for arcane reasons of her own.

If you are wondering: Yes, Mitsue and Mitsuharu were captured by Crowley, so really the loss of Jacob's food source and ensuing tragedies are his fault. Yes, the many-tailed 'First Fox' was the Alpha Kitsune. Mitsue was rescued without much difficulty, because kitsune are really slippery.

The second ending exists because I hate downer endings.

The first ending exists because I think that's how the story was supposed to end -- with Amy murdered like her grandparents, without ever getting the chance to reach her potential, and Jacob left traumatized and angry and at risk of taking Violet's path. Maybe thinking the Winchesters are dead will enable him to let it go and move on; maybe he'll come back from Japan in ten years ready to hunt some Hunters. If so, he won't be trying to play by human rules, because he saw how much good it did his mom.

**Author's Note:**

> Full warning list: Canonical character death, death of original characters including a child, non-graphic attempted sexual assault, discussion of kitsune diet, unplanned pregnancy, optional happy-ish ending, language.


End file.
